


a soft place to land

by wayfarer



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Coda, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e04 9-1-1 What's Your Grievance?, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:07:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29322915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayfarer/pseuds/wayfarer
Summary: Eddie knows immediately that something is wrong.For days, Buck’s mood has ranged from quiet and withdrawn to nervous and twitchy to seriously pissed off. Eddie doesn’t think he’s seen him smile since he found out his parents were in the same time zone, and now he’s standing in the kitchen laughing and joking around like he wasn’t trying to put his fist through a punching bag just two days ago?Yeah, no. Something’s definitely wrong.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 350





	a soft place to land

Eddie knows immediately that something is wrong.

He’s running late this morning, so by the time he gets to the station and changes into his uniform the others are already in the kitchen. Bobby is standing behind the island stirring something in a pan on the stove top, Hen and Chimney are sitting on the stools in front of him and Buck – well. Buck looks normal. He’s standing on Bobby’s right, talking animatedly as he slices strawberries and puts them in a bowl. He’s got a wide smile on his face that grows when Bobby says something to him, too low for Eddie to hear. 

He slows to a stop as alarm bells go off in his head. 

For days, Buck’s mood has ranged from quiet and withdrawn to nervous and twitchy to seriously pissed off. Eddie doesn’t think he’s seen him smile since he found out his parents were in the same time zone, and now he’s standing in the kitchen laughing and joking around like he wasn’t trying to put his fist through a punching bag just two days ago?

Yeah, no. Something’s definitely wrong. 

He can’t see Hen and Chimney’s faces from this angle, but judging by the looks Bobby keeps shooting Buck out of the corner of his eye he’s come to the same conclusion.

Buck catches sight of Eddie standing by the couches and his smile widens. “Eddie! Have you ever heard of competitive endurance tickling?”

“Uh – no?” 

“Buck’s been telling us all about it,” Hen says, turning in her seat. She has a polite smile on her face and now Eddie really knows something’s wrong. After years of working and eating and sleeping and bleeding together, polite isn’t really something any of them do with each other anymore. “He watched a video on it last night.”

“A documentary,” Buck corrects and then frowns. “Why are you standing all the way over there? Come into the kitchen. You’re being weird.”

 _No, you are_ , Eddie wants to say but he doesn’t. Both because he’s not twelve and because the energy in the room is downright weird in a way he’s never experienced since he started working at the 118. 

As soon as he's in the kitchen Buck starts describing the documentary in painstaking detail and Hen and Bobby nod along like hearing about grown adults tickling each other for sport is the most interesting thing they’ve ever heard. Eddie has less than no interest in competitive tickling on a good day, but even if he did he wouldn’t be able to focus on what Buck’s saying because he’s caught sight of Chimney’s face for the first time and– 

Yeah. Something is wrong. Really, _really_ wrong. Chimney isn’t even attempting to pretend like he isn’t openly staring at Buck. He looks wary, like Buck is a bomb that’s about to go off. Hen and Bobby's smiles get progressively more strained and they keep exchanging looks with each other and Eddie – well. Eddie feels like he’s stepped into an episode of the _Twilight Zone_. Or possibly a hostage situation. 

It doesn’t get better. 

They sit at the table like they always do once breakfast is ready and they move on from Buck’s weird ass documentary to other topics of conversation, but there’s an undercurrent of tension that puts Eddie on edge. Chimney keeps trying to catch Buck’s eye from across the table and Buck seemingly does everything in his power not to let him, instead turning to Hen and asking first how med school’s going and then about the kids. They bounce from subject to subject so quickly Eddie can hardly keep up, but by the time they finish breakfast one thing becomes glaringly obvious.

Buck is trying very, very hard not to spectacularly lose his shit. 

Eddie’s been there. He knows the signs. He can see the anger boiling under the calm exterior and polite conversation. He can see how Buck’s desperately trying to cling onto some sense of normalcy even though it’s clear to everyone something has happened in the last twenty-four hours that’s sent normal right out the window. 

Eddie plans on pulling Buck to the side after they’re done clearing off the table but before he gets the chance the alarm rings and they’re off. The call is for a pile up at an intersection a few blocks away. There are only minor injuries, nothing that requires a trip to the hospital, but clearing the road takes a while so by the time they get back to the station a couple of hours have passed. During the call he was almost able to forget something was going on as everyone slipped into professional mode, but as soon as they got back on the truck the sense of normalcy faded. 

“Hey, can I talk to you?” Eddie asks, voice low, as they step off the truck back at the station. He curls his hand around Buck’s shoulder, but Buck immediately slips out of his hold.

“Sorry, man,” he says with a laugh, taking a step back. It sounds so painfully fake that Eddie has to resist the urge to wince. “Gotta go help Cap clear the dishes from this morning,” he explains even though they both know they’ve been cleared off by someone else by now. 

Before he can call him on the weak excuse, Buck is taking off. Eddie contemplates going after him before switching tactics and heading toward Chimney instead, who’s just stepping out of the ambulance. He’s frowning down at the phone in his hand, so he doesn’t notice Eddie approaching until Eddie is right in his space.

Eddie recognizes that shifty eyed look from a few days before when Chimney took off down the pole like someone was chasing him. “I don’t think so,” he says, grabbing him by the elbow. A few people, including Hen, give them a weird look as he drags Chimney into a corner of the station where less people are loitering. “Okay,” he says, letting him go. “Talk. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what–”

“Oh, come on, man,” Eddie says. “A couple of days ago you literally ran away from us after going on about explosive information you wish you didn’t know and now Buck is acting like a pod person who won’t meet your eye. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots.” 

Chimney throws his hands up in the air and huffs. “Look, I would love to tell you. I want nothing more than to unload this burden onto you or Hen or Bobby or _literally anyone_ , but I can’t. _I can’t_ , okay?” 

“Can’t you just – tell me _something_?” he asks, frustrated. He’s normally a big fan of minding his own business, but up until this point Buck has kept him in the loop and now that he’s not Eddie can only fear the worst. He’s not sure what worse could possibly be at this point but clearly it’s bad based on the way Buck and Chimney are acting. He wants to be somewhat prepared for when Buck’s tenuous grip finally snaps. 

Chimney glances over his shoulder, but no one seems to be paying them any attention. Buck, at the very least, is completely out of sight. “You know that potentially explosive information I was talking about the other day?” he asks, voice low. Eddie nods. “Well, it exploded. Epically. All over the place. And Buck knows that I knew and kept it from him because Maddie swore me to secrecy so now everything is very messy and complicated and I’m pretty sure I’m developing an ulcer.”

And – okay. That makes sense. It’s not like Eddie wasn’t curious about Chim’s little freak out the other day. He even kind of figured it had something to do with the Buckleys considering the timing, but it was obvious that it wasn’t information Chimney could share so it’s not like Eddie was going to track him down and grill him. He got too distracted by Buck’s uncharacteristically caustic mood to really give it much more thought anyway.

“And I’ve tried talking to him about it,” Chimney continues. “He doesn’t want to talk to me and I don’t know if it’s because he’s pissed off or embarrassed or if it’s just weird because I’m his friend and coworker who’s also having a baby with his sister but clearly it’s not going to be me that he talks to. So. You’re up.”

“I’ve already tried talking to him. He wasn’t interested.”

“Try again. It shouldn’t be that hard. You know how he is with you.”

“What?”

Chimney gives him a deeply unimpressed look and starts backing away. “Don’t act oblivious. It’s not nearly as convincing on you as it is on him.”

And that’s the end of the conversation because Eddie really just has no response to that. 

After careful consideration, he ultimately decides to leave Buck be.

It’s not that he isn’t curious about what’s going on. He’s _damn_ curious, but it’s obvious Buck doesn’t want to talk about it and after a lifetime of dealing with people trying to insert themselves into his business (i.e. his parents), he knows how obnoxious it is to be needled into talking about something he doesn’t want to talk about. So he’s going to respect Buck’s boundaries and act like Buck’s pulling off his whole “I’m fine” routine because that’s what he seems to need right now. 

There’s also the other thing. 

He knows Chimney is right. 

Buck likes to follow his lead. It’s been like that almost the entire time they’ve known each other and Eddie’s never been quite able to figure out why. He knows those first few shifts Buck acted like such an ass because he felt threatened and he felt threatened because he was impressed. Yeah, Eddie was a probie, but he was also a medic in a war zone for years. He was never exactly green. He successfully pulled a live round out of a man’s thigh on his second shift, for god’s sake. He gets why Buck was so drawn to _that_ Eddie. That Eddie was a little older, a little more experienced, a little more in control than Buck would ever be. 

What Eddie doesn’t understand is why Buck continued to follow his lead after he learned that Eddie is just a guy with more than his fair share of flaws and a messy history like everyone else. Maybe it’s because they work so well together or because he could relate or maybe he just needed a friend. Regardless of the reason, from the moment Buck realized Eddie wanted a partner, not a rival, he had one. 

Lately, he’s been entertaining the possibility of another explanation, but he hasn’t quite figured out if it’s well-founded or wishful thinking and he sure as hell can’t ask anyone to weigh in. 

Most the time it feels too ridiculous to even consider as a possibility, but then he thinks about how Buck always stands so close to him when they walk that their shoulders constantly bump into each other or how he always looks so _pleased_ when Eddie invites him over to hang out with him and Chris or how he never seems to mind Eddie teasing him as much as the others and he thinks: oh, he _likes_ you.

And then if Eddie really starts going down the rabbit hole he thinks about how Buck teamed up with Athena to secretly plan an entire Christmas dinner after he found out how upset Chris was about Eddie working or that look they exchanged when Chris was back in his arms less than a minute after Buck told him he’d lost him during the tsunami or that news footage his sister sent him of Buck literally digging at the ground with his bare hands after Eddie got buried under 40 feet of wet earth and he thinks: no, he _loves_ you. 

But most of the time he tries to remind himself that Buck is a deeply loving, kind person who would do anything for the people he cares about and Eddie should probably get a grip before he ruins the best friendship he’s ever had by projecting his own less than platonic feelings onto Buck. 

The point is, for whatever the reason, he knows that he has influence over Buck in a way the others don’t and it feels unfair to take advantage of that, so he keeps his mouth shut and keeps an eye on him for the duration of their twenty-four hour shift instead of pushing him into talking.

To Buck’s credit, he keeps it together. He’s clearly off and Eddie sees Cap and Hen try to talk to him more than once, but he brushes them off and they let it go even if they clearly don’t like it. Not once does he mess up on a call, so in the end there isn’t much anyone can do except wait.

When they finish their shift at eight the next morning, Buck gets changed and immediately starts heading to his car instead of hanging around to talk like he normally does, so Eddie has to jog across the parking lot to catch up with him. He can see Buck’s slightly panicked look when he notices Eddie before he’s able to school his features, but all Eddie says is, “Hey, you should come by later. Hang out with me and Chris. He misses you.”

And _okay_ , that might be slightly manipulative but it’s also true, so Eddie refuses to feel bad about it. Chris always wants Buck to come over and Buck always seems to leave in a happier mood than when he arrived, so it’s a win win scenario for everyone. 

Buck rubs the back of his neck and says, “Uh, yeah, maybe. I’ll let you know,” and Eddie doesn’t push it, just nods and knocks his hand against Buck’s shoulder before heading to his own car. 

When he unlocks his front door thirty minutes later, the smell of pancakes and the sound of Chris and Pepa laughing greets him. He slips in as quietly as possible and heads straight to his room so he can shower and change. He’d texted Pepa to let her know he was on the way so she could distract Chris, so he’s able to successfully sneak past the kitchen. It’s not that Chris doesn’t understand why school is all online now or why everyone wears masks or why Eddie has to take extra precautions, but it still breaks Eddie’s heart a little when Chris tries to hug him when he walks through the door and Eddie has to take a hasty step back. It’s much preferable to all those weeks when he went to Buck’s place after a shift instead of home and the only time he and Chris saw each other was over Facetime, but still. He’s doing his best to avoid any incidents. Chris has always been a pretty laid back kid, but between not being able to go to school and see his friends and his dad suddenly moving out and just as suddenly moving back in weeks later, he’s had more epic meltdowns in the last few months than he’s had in his entire life. 

Chris is all smiles when Eddie walks into the kitchen and scoops him up into a big hug a few minutes later. 

A familiar voice in his head tells him that he’s being selfish and irresponsible by coming home at all when he could potentially expose Chris, but after months of therapy he’s able to shut it down before it eats away at him. He tries to remind himself instead that he’s doing his best in a shitty situation and that’s all he can do.

Feels worth it sitting at his kitchen table with his son and his aunt, eating pancakes and laughing as Chris unsuccessfully but very enthusiastically tries to convince Eddie that getting a lizard would help him get an A in his science class. 

By the time they’re finished with breakfast, Eddie is starting to crash. He never sleeps well on shifts, too aware that he could be woken up at any point in time by the alarm, so he’s used to coming home and sleeping for a few hours. It’s harder to convince himself to do so with Chris home, but Pepa doesn’t mind staying a few extra hours to help Chris with his Zoom calls so Eddie can get a nap in. 

He helps clear the table and clean the kitchen before he heads into his room, sliding under the covers and falling asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He wakes up a little after noon and reaches for his phone immediately, wincing as his eyes adjust. He was hoping Buck would have texted him by now to let him know he was coming over like he normally would, but there aren’t any notifications, and he tries not to feel disappointed. Buck will talk when he’s ready to talk.

Pepa leaves shortly after he gets up, so he rushes to put together a couple of sandwiches for him and Chris for lunch before Chris’s next Zoom meeting at one thirty. He’s got two more before he’s done for the day and even though he insists that Eddie doesn’t need to stay in the kitchen with him, Eddie does. He’s not sure if it’s an independence thing or – god help him – if Chris is finally getting to the age where parents are embarrassing, but regardless he’s heard way too many horror stories over the last couple of months of things happening during Zoom calls for him to leave Chris unsupervised. 

He compromises by sitting off screen, reading the news on his phone and drinking a cup of coffee made by the coffee machine Buck pranked him with. If you could call spending over a hundred dollars on an item that someone technically wanted a prank, that is. Later that night after Chris was asleep and Eddie was lying in bed, he’d looked it up and nearly dropped his phone on his face when he saw the price. He had every intention of returning it the next day and giving Buck his money back, but then the thought had crossed his mind that maybe Buck had other intentions besides simply scaring the shit out of him. Eddie would never buy something that nice for himself and he would certainly never let anyone else buy it for him and Buck knew that, so maybe this was Buck’s way of giving him something he wanted in a way that Eddie would actually feel like he could accept. 

Or maybe Buck just didn’t mind blowing money on a prank.

Best not to go down the rabbit hole. 

Chris likes to get started on his homework immediately after he’s done for the day (and seriously, where the hell does he get that from?), so Eddie leaves him to it and catches up on some cleaning and laundry he’s been neglecting the last few days. Every once in a while, Chris will call him into the kitchen with a question and Eddie helps him with what he can and Googles what he can’t, but for the most part Chris is good on his own. 

Eddie manages to get everything done by the time Chris finishes the last of his homework a little after five. He’s leaning against the counter, watching Chris pack up his school supplies and contemplating what to do for dinner when there’s a knock on the door. 

“Be right back,” he tells Chris and tries not to get his hopes up as he makes his way down the hall.

“I brought dinner,” Buck says as soon as the door swings open, a box of pizza in one hand and a six pack in the other. He’s wearing that same fake grin, but his eyes are a little red and Eddie can’t tell if it’s from lack of sleep or if he’s been crying. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, of course.” Eddie opens the door wider and steps to the side, their shoulders brushing as Buck slides past him. “You okay?”

“I’m good,” he says, already making his way toward the kitchen as Eddie closes the door. “Sorry about not texting first.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie says, but it’s drowned out by Chris’s enthusiastic yelling when he catches sight of Buck. 

Eddie grabs the plates and napkins while Buck grabs two beers for them and some water for Chris, and they end up heading to the living room and eating around the coffee table. Chris is thrilled by the surprise visit and spends most of dinner telling Buck about his classes and what his friends have been up to. He brings up the lizard at one point and Buck’s eyebrows shoot up, glancing over at Eddie out of the corner of his eye, but Eddie just shakes his head.

“Did your dad ever tell you about that time we saw a really big lizard on one of our calls?” Buck asks and when Chris shakes his head, launches into the entire disgusting story. Eddie thinks he probably meant to gross him out, but Chris looks even more enthused afterwards and he shoots Eddie a sheepish grin.

Eddie rolls his eyes. 

After dinner, Chris asks if they can play video games and when Eddie agrees, Buck laughs at him. “That didn’t last long,” he comments.

“Yeah, well.” Eddie shrugs. “As it turns out, you can control all the safety settings from your phone, so. Also, he didn’t really like Scrabble, remember?”

Chris really, _really_ did not like Scrabble. Buck’s sales pitch was pretty good, but Chris had been deeply unimpressed with the game. Eddie still laughs when he thinks about how his brow got progressively more pinched and his sighs more dramatic the longer they played. Needless to say, Scrabble isn’t exactly peak entertainment for a nine year old.

He expects Buck to laugh, but instead he gets a look on his face that Eddie can’t quite decipher and says, “You're a good dad.”

Buck immediately turns back to Chris, accepting the controller he’s holding out. His shoulders are tense like he’s dreading Eddie’s reply, so Eddie just hums in response and grabs the third controller. Buck’s still tense when they start playing, but after a few rounds he loosens up and his smile starts looking more genuine than it has in days. The longer they play, the more his mood seems to improve, until Eddie can almost convince himself that nothing’s changed since the last time they were here.

Unfortunately, the illusion doesn’t last long. After about an hour of video games Chris loses interest, so they switch over to a whale documentary instead. Eddie’s never been a big fan of documentaries, but Buck and Chris are, and he likes watching how into it they get. 

It’s because Eddie is watching them more so than the documentary itself that he can see the way Buck’s good mood slowly starts to fade away. He’s all smiles and laughs when Chris’s attention is on him, but he looks less and less happy every time it’s not. By the time Chris starts conking out on them, he looks downright miserable. 

When he gives Chris a hug good night, he musters up a smile so weak that even Chris wouldn’t buy it if he wasn’t half asleep. 

After Chris is tucked in, Eddie makes a pitstop in the kitchen to grab a couple more beers before he rejoins Buck on the couch. He takes the bottle with a murmured “thank you” when Eddie offers it, but he sets in down onto the coffee table and slumps back against the couch.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Eddie asks, nudging Buck’s foot with his own. “You know I’m not going to force you to, but if you want to talk, I’m ready to listen.” 

He’d always been bad at that, with Shannon – listening. It’s not that he didn’t want to or that he didn’t care, but he’s always been a problem solver. It took him years to realize that most of the time she needed support rather than solutions. Sometimes he can’t help but wonder how different everything would be if he had that revelation years ago, but it’s too little too late. All he can do is stop making the same mistake over and over again.

Buck blows out a breath, sinking further into the couch, and Eddie waits and waits and waits until finally:

“I had a brother.”

And that is pretty much the last thing he expected to hear. 

“His name was Daniel and he died a long time ago,” Buck continues in an uncharacteristically monotone voice, staring at the TV screen. It’s paused on a shot of an enormous whale half emerged from the water. “I never knew about him. I was never supposed to know about him, but I found a picture of him in Maddie’s baby box and she was kind of forced to explain.”

“Your parents never…” Eddie says, trailing off. Clearly, they didn’t, but he doesn’t know what else to say. 

“Apparently they thought it would be easier for everyone if I never knew, so they made Maddie promise to never tell me and they just – never did.” Buck leans forward then to grab the beer bottle, but instead of taking a swig he starts picking at the label, shoulders hunched. “What kind of parents tell their grieving kid to forget about her dead brother?”

 _Really fucking shitty ones_ , he thinks. 

“Are you upset with her?” he asks. He can’t really tell, which is surprising considering most of the time Buck is an open book. It’s hard to imagine him being truly angry at Maddie, but it’s also hard to imagine him not being at least a little upset at having such a huge secret kept from him his entire life. 

Buck laughs – a sharp, bitter sound. “Yeah, but not – not about that.” He keeps picking at the label, jaw working. Eddie keeps quiet, waiting for him to speak. After a few seconds, he does. “My entire life –” He clears his throat. “My entire life, I’ve felt like a disappointment to them. Nothing I did was ever good enough. Nothing ever made them happy. And yeah, it sucked, but as I got older I told myself that’s just how they are. That they didn’t like kids. That they didn’t really want to be parents. That they had these ridiculously high, unrealistic expectations that no one could ever possibly meet, so of course I always fell short. Anyone would.”

Eddie hums. 

“But as it turns out, it was never about that,” he continues. “It wasn’t about which sports I played or how many trophies I won or what grades I made. It was about _him_. They wanted Daniel and I wasn’t him and I could never make up for that.”

He glances over at Eddie then and he looks so fucking bone deep exhausted that it makes Eddie’s heart squeeze painfully in his chest. “Maddie knew that,” he says, voice rough. “And she still let me keep trying. I know it was an impossible situation that they never should have put her in. I’ll get over it because I don’t want to be mad at her and she doesn’t deserve it, but I just – I tried _so hard_.”

Eddie has so many things he wants to say in that moment – he wants to tell Buck that they were terrible parents. That he’s better off without them. That they never deserved him to begin with. But even though all those things are true, it’s not necessarily what Buck needs to hear.

“You shouldn’t have had to,” he says instead. “It’s never a child’s responsibility to earn their parents love and attention. It’s a parent's responsibility to give it freely. And yeah, I’m sure they were devastated when they lost Daniel.” 

The handful of seconds between Buck telling Eddie he couldn’t find Chris and seeing Chris in that woman’s arms still keeps him up at night sometimes. It was the worst pain he’s ever felt in his life and he can’t possibly imagine having to live with it day in and day out, but – “That didn’t give them the right to check out,” he continues. “It was their job to love you and support you no matter what. That’s what a good parent does. The fact that they didn’t is a reflection on them, not on you.”

Buck stares at him for a handful of weighted seconds, lips parted, before he turns his attention back to the bottle in his hand. A complicated array of emotions flash across his face in quick succession, there and gone before Eddie can really put a name to any of them, but he can see the way Buck’s cheeks flush slightly and it makes his breath catch.

“You really are a good dad,” Buck says, smiling down at the bottle. 

Eddie clears his throat. “I try,” he says, and then: “You should stay here tonight.”

Buck turns to him, quirking an eyebrow. He looks – better. Not okay, but a little less like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” He can’t go back in time and make Buck’s parents less terrible or make them tell him the truth and he certainly can’t erase nearly three decades worth of damage they caused, but he can do this. He can offer him a soft place to land when things get to be too much. “If you leave, I’m probably going to start Googling how much upkeep a lizard needs.”

Buck laughs. “Sucker.”

“I know.”

“Okay, I’ll stay,” he says, “but only if I get to eat the rest of the pizza. Deal?”

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> the documentary buck was talking about is called Tickled and it's on hulu. i've never watched it but if any of you have please tell me if it's as bizarre as it sounds
> 
> tumblr: evanbuckleyed


End file.
